There was once a little girl. Well actually she was a big, fat girl but her beloved nan kept telling her it was “puppy fat that would drop off” in the same hopeful tone from ages 3-10, despite the evidence increasingly pointing to it being “human fat that wouldn’t drop off because you keep feeding it with chocolate, god damn it Anna.”

Aged 10 it finally did start dropping off, alarmingly quickly, coupled with an insatiable thirst, a corresponding neverending need to pee, and an inexplicable exhaustion. In short, all the classic symptoms of Type 1 diabetes.

A GP that must have been on glue diagnosed the girl with constipation, despite her having none of the symptoms. Stay off the glue, kids, especially if you’re practicing medicine.

Five days later the child was in a diabetic coma with hospital doctors battling for literally 10 hours to bring her back from the brink of death.

Google knew more than the glue-sniffer.

The little girl thought of her grandfather; the only person she’d ever heard of who was banned from a hospital on grounds of overuse, being a terrible hypochondriac who read medical dictionaries for inspiration.

It was in the genes.

The little girl became The Hypochondriac.

One sunny July (well, one rainy July – this is England), The Hypochondriac, now aged 27, sits at her desk at work. During a routine readjustment of her sleeve she discovers a tick on her bicep.

The Hypochondriac removes the tick with the small but well-stocked medical kit tweezers she keeps in her bag.

“I’d better Google ticks and find out which disease I’m going to get,” she jokes.

“Wise move,” agrees The Duckfather, who is used to the hypochondria. Anna has worked for him for two years and, in that time, has self-diagnosed herself with ebola 13 times.

“Ooh!” says Anna, scrolling through the Google results with hypochondriac-joy in her eyes. “I could get Lyme disease, Colorado tick fever, or Rocky Mountain spotter fever.”

“Probably all three,” Ducky says sagely. “Especially the second two, since we’re in London.”

They laugh. Oh Anna and her hypochondriac ways! Not all ticks carry Lyme, and even when they do there’s only a 2% chance of their bite victims contracting it. Of course Anna isn’t going to get Lyme disease!

Fast forward two weeks. Anna discovered a rash on the tick bite site.

Anna has Lyme disease.

It’s not just Google that tells her; it’s a real doctor, who has to look up the appropriate antibiotics in a book because she’s never had to treat Lyme before, what with it being so rare and everything.

Well, okay, so that’s kinda bad luck, but nothing to get paranoid about. That’s no proof that Anna always catches everything no matter how unlikely it is. That’s just the hypochondria talking!

Anyway, antiobiotics will sort it out.

Anna dutifully takes her antibiotics and keeps busy updating her spreadsheet of the symptoms of all 993 illnesses she’s definitely got writing her third novel (insert some sort of teaser that will make you want to read it–am I doing this marketing thing right?)

The next day she goes to her friend Tach’s to “eat Doritos and watch some programme about dead people and then maybe we can find The Human Centipede 3 on Netflix” because Tach knows what makes Anna tick. She’s the one who got her the sharkado-in-a-glass after all:

Get yours here and no I am not paid for advertising these I JUST LOVE IT

Anyway.

Merrily munching Doritos, Anna starts to feel a pain between her shoulder blades. It comes and goes throughout the dead-people-and-human-centipede-watching.

The next day the pain is worse, and it’s making her yelp when she swallows which makes her really sad because eating is Anna’s third favourite thing in the world after 1) writing and 2) diagnosing herself with illnesses. Some days it comes joint-second because there are a lot of nutrition-related illnesses out there.

So what does a hypochondriac do?

Googles and makes a doctor’s appointment. Another one.

The antibiotics that are fixing the very-rare Lyme disease have reacted in a way they very-rarely do and giving Anna a very-rare oesophageal ulcer. That’s as fun as it sounds.

I too am a hypo-whatsaname. When I feel ill, it’s the onset of a heart attack, and all because I once heard a sufferer start their heart attack story with, “I woke up that morning and just felt a little unwell, nothing more…”

I’m also diabetic (type 2) but you know that already. I had a text today from my surgery telling my fasting test is due. I try, I really do, but chocolate is very very nice and makes me happy.

I’ve had 43 heart attacks to my knowledge. I also have more chocolate than I should. Do you like dark chocolate? Apparently people tend to eat less of that because it’s richer. I don’t, so I buy little snack bars of chocolate which at least limits my portion sizes.

Oh dear Ms Kaling. That is what I call ‘seriously unlucky’. But I’m a glass-half-full-kinda-gal and I’m thinking, hey, maybe your fourth book could be about a hypochondriac who googles so much about medical conditions that she becomes an expert and gets a job at a hospital and falls in love with the most amazing looking doc – EVER. Or not.

Get well soon. At least your illness hasn’t affected your sense of humour – always a pleasure to read.

A few years ago I had the frequent urge to pee with minimal result and some bleeding. Classic urinary tract infection symptoms. I go to a clinic and they make me pee in a cup. “You have a UTI. Here are your antibiotics. We’ll call you if the test results reveal something else.” I go home with my antibiotics and have the worst 12 hours of agonizing pain in my life.

A couple weeks later the symptoms return. I go back to the same clinic. I tell them I was recently in for the same thing. They send me home with more UTI antibiotics.

A couple days later I’m not better so I go to a different clinic. Immediately the doctor says he doesn’t think it’s a UTI. He calls the first clinic and learns BOTH UTI TESTS WERE NEGATIVE.

So, not only did they not call to say “oh, nvm, those antibiotics aren’t going to do shit. Lolz. Our bad.” On my second visit they didn’t think, “hmm, I see we misdiagnosed you a few weeks ago. Let’s actually apply our critical thinking skills and see what is going on.”

I’m sent for a cat scan and…drumroll…it’s a giant tumor on my right kidney. The kidney and tumor have cancer (super fun rare kids cancer called Wilms). Surgery to remove them a couple weeks later and chemo a couple weeks after that.

Ooh I wonder if I have a B12 deficiency, too. I’m pretty sure I have a vitamin D deficiency.

I’m so glad the ebola has cleared up. You should write a memoir about your journey.

But seriously, sounds like you have every damn reason to be self diagnosing. I’m so sorry all that has happened!!! I’m picturing a tick that fleed it’s home in a rite of passage to fund the perfect host. It traveled far and wide to find you and gift you with its special powers. It could be a children’s book! 😂

I self diagnose all the time. But I’m usually right. So if I do need to go to the doctor, it’s for a second opinion, lol. I diagnosed myself with mono when I was eleven with the help of a babysitters club book.